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Euro this, Euro that. Open from Friday with scintillating watching-the-paint-dry Poland - Greece.
(Weirdly, I'll be watching that game in a pub literally fifty meters from hotel where English internationals are staying.)

The salaries you pay your fellas, your prices will be going up soon too. Barring possibly ze germans, that's just waht the top european clubs do to stay afloat. The sheikh can't be so charitable forever. Even if he wanted to with all those potential sponsorship from companies that are in bed with him, there's only so much.

Total amount invested by our Arab overlords since Sept 2008 - I'd estimate less than £1bn.

Total amount of money generated in a 6 week period in June-July 2008 for doing absolutely nothing...an estimated £11bn (buying then selling shares in Barclays Bank plc)

Even coming from someone whose owners are all but bankrupt (check out how their US businesses are doing) and are fleecing the club and the sheep that follow them for all they can, your statements are quite amusing. You might also want to look at the 5 year investment plans, including the new Academy. Doesn't look like they will be leaving any time soon.

Money generated by the owner by screwing around with the stock market =/= Club revenue. Never said the rich bastard would run out of money, the guy has probably enough money to buy out the league and still have trouble trying to 'dry out'. But the FFP is being introduced specifically to keep 'charity cases' no?

I am both an American and have been an avid Red since 1997 when I first started watching the PL, I am more than aware of the sh*tty situation the likes of Glazers are in (and brought on themselves) along with the rest of our country, as well as the situation United brought upon itself by getting involved/stuck with the likes of the Glazers. That said, even with all its global fanbase and revenues in consideration, I am pretty sure the current ticket prices would not be anywhere near as low as City's currently is.

While FFP may kind of be on hold atm, it's still very much looming on the horizon. There has got to be a point where City has to start looking at its ticket prices to start balancing the CLUB's books regardless of how much money the Sheikh is swimming in. The club is finally proven to be playing at the top level now, which means continued high wages and transfer fees for retaining a competitive roster. Perhaps not as high as right now, but you really think you can scale/convert down to Arsenal levels? Even if you could, look where it's gotten Arsenal. And sure the academy that the Sheikh is investing in will probably improve the club, but that's a long term investment that isn't going to immediately start chipping into the player pool. It's a FIVE year plan. The FFP looks likely to be really kicking in the doors much sooner than that.

Then again, it's UEFA. It's just as likely FFP will fall by the wayside, and City will have more than enough time and Glazers will continue to stick around and bleed our club dry unopposed until... well whatever.

Anyways, even without the FFP in consideration, it's kind of naive to assume the ticket prices will continue to stick around in the range of the bottom half of the league when your club is spending like a top 4 at a direct loss.

If you look at the accounts of any large PL club, direct ticket income is a relatively small part of overall revenue. For example, City have 36,000 season ticket holders. If we average them out at £500 each, then you are looking at £18m. Let's say you make another £8m from non-ST sales. That's £26m out of over £200m for City.

Therefore, the amount extra you can generate in these financially straitened times is significantly less than the grief you attract. I am pretty confident City's ticket prices will be in the bottom half for a fair while to come, unless you are talking about the corporate boxes.

No, the real dollars will come in 2014, when Sky's TV contract all but triples.

Aye, until your legs go. Fair point about what he would be replacing, mind you, but he's 31 now and is going to want a megabucks final payday.

Meanwhile, Fergie is off having another go at a referee after dropping points (what, never !!). Apparently, van Persil 'could have been killed' when the ball was kicked at his head, and the genial Scot wants the offending player banned.

I presume in Fergie's world that makes every header attempted suicide then ? Christ, if you made him up no one would believe you.

i wouldn't say it's post-match ban worthy either (especially not in today's premier league), but it's very close to being a super scary sight.

if williams was off a couple inches (clearly not a stretch to assume the guy had sh*t control over his feet given where the ball went), or had he kicked the ball harder enough, it could have been super dangerous. a strong impact to the back of the head of anyone not suspecting such impact can have serious outcomes.

you can see williams looking at RvP the whole time as he is kicing in the gif itself, and see him following his feet through as far away from RvP's head as he can (which is what I think actually led the ball to hit RvP cause of the angle of contact with williams' foot). I would not assume malicous intent. But that said, it's a scary/difficult situation williams was in, and I also can't say that was his only course of action (in which case is williams responsible?). Perhaps he could have waited a second or two tried to control away from Persie, there wasn't any other red close enough to make that impossible.

EDIT2: oh wait, I missed the game, but I just found out the whistle had been blown? really? then davet, you're nuts for calling ferguson crazy. sure post-match ban would be a pipe dream, but fergusson is more than entitled to be pissed off at williams about that. that crap was dangerous and shouldn't have happened. It's a careless act that could have turned out horrible. Sure, at the end of the day, it wasn't, and it looks kinda funny. But Ferguson definitely isn't in the wrong for speaking out about it. he's certainly not innocent when it comes to overreactions in the press (then again who is?), but this isn't one of those cases.

And if that's the worse thing that Ferguson has ever seen happen on a pitch, then I guess he really didn't see all of Royston 'the Coward' Keane's assaults on other players - maybe you could ask Alf-Inge Haaland about the one that actually did end his career, which the bog-trotting vermin gleefully alludes to in his autobiography.

I've never seen someone 'clear' a ball when it's sitting less than a few INCHES behind someone's head after a whistle has been blown, no. That careless kick could have had serious consequences.

Also, no one's saying it was the worst thing anyone's ever seen on a pitch. Many careers have been ended or heavily hampered by thoughtless or all-out malicious tackles/fouls. But if it meant that any club who's had a history of fouls like that couldn't say anything when something like this happens to them, no one could say anything.

"He should be banned for a long time because that was the most dangerous thing I've seen on a football field for many years."

Oh, and Sir Alex ? Given that the referee booked both players, he obviously did see the incident and therefore deemed the punishment to be appropriate. That would seem to preclude the possibility of any retrospective bans.

How else do you think Paul 'ha, everyone knows Scholesy can't tackle' Scholes has racked up more than 800 games in his career rather than 400 and a series of lengthy bans ?

Oh, and Sir Alex ? Given that the referee booked both players, he obviously did see the incident and therefore deemed the punishment to be appropriate. That would seem to preclude the possibility of any retrospective bans.

I think I've already agreed with you that a retrospective ban is pretty much out of the question. The FA is notoriously sh*tty at that anyway.

That said, I thought the booking was more for the altercation that followed rather than the incident that led up to it?

Ferguson's way over the top there and full of it. Had he said, "Robin could have got a concussion, brain injuries are dangerous" he might have had a point. Would have meant being prudent and subbing Van Persie off so he could be examined thoroughly as a precaution.

Leaving Van Persie out there shows how concerned Ferguson really was about Van Persie's health.

Leaving Van Persie out there shows how concerned Ferguson really was about Van Persie's health.

Given the altercation that followed, and how fast Van Persie bounced up to start it, anyone there could have figured that there was very little chance that any of the potentially serious/fatal damage did actually happen. It's a discussion of what COULD have happened.

ps. What could have happened isn't just some long term injuiry or a career ending one (not to say that those aren't serious or worthy of the manager discussing it), this one could have been LIFE ending.

A strike like that (imagine if he'd missed and just struck his head instead) from that 'distance' on the occpital nerve of an unsuspecting individual? After a whistle had been blown? Absolutely correct for the player/club's manager to comment on the incident. Ferguson was right to use THIS incident as a talking point to divert the discussion away from our sh*tty performance (which btw, not an 'uncommon' practice if you were thinking of going there).

Was he a bit liberal with how far he went on the subject? Sure. But NO manager would go 'yeah that could have been pretty bad. strikes from 5 inches away directly on someone's back of the head are pretty darn dangerous. tish tish.' after something like that happens to one of their players.

Utterly crap result. But Berba's shirt was class. I'm afraid of relegation, and we shouldn't be, but it's seeming like losing Dembele and Dempsey really did mean that much.

And I still can't quite believe what i'm seeing with the collapse of Liverpool. It's honestly a bit jaw-dropping. It wasn't that long ago that they were CL regulars and challenging for the title. At this rate, 10th would be a great season.

Utterly crap result. But Berba's shirt was class. I'm afraid of relegation, and we shouldn't be, but it's seeming like losing Dembele and Dempsey really did mean that much.

And I still can't quite believe what i'm seeing with the collapse of Liverpool. It's honestly a bit jaw-dropping. It wasn't that long ago that they were CL regulars and challenging for the title. At this rate, 10th would be a great season.

and who says there isn't fluctuation in football.

Hey remember when Valencia was good also.

I bet Dave even remembers teams like Lazio, Roma and Napoli being a force.

I think Fullham will be fine just by Berbatov alone. 6 goals doesn't sound like allot but he will consistently bang them in to keep you guys clear of the relegation fight IMO.

edit: and by looking at the table its bizzaro Premier league.

United are top of the table with a GD of +20.... while allowing 28 goals.

To put that in perspective they have won the title while allowing only 27. Mourinho's Chelsea only allowed 22 once. The Invincibles did it with 26....

To be fair, Mendieta was one of the best midfielders in Spain at the time. Playing for Nazio at the time was difficult as the club was only kept afloat by dubious tax dodges (including the counterfeiting of bank deposit confirmations) and dodgy transfer deals between Italian clubs known as 'plus-valance' which were pure accounting dodges.

There were few things more depressing, though, than seeing him turn out for a workaday Boro side containing players who couldn't begin to understand the passes he was making.

Newcastle paying the price for completely ignoring the glaringly obvious need for a centreback and a rightback in the summer. Squad depth (and quality) at the back is appalling and has been all season, especially when the team's also playing in the Europa League. Good thing Pardew got that 8-year contract on a high-PDO season.

On the bright side I though Marveaux looked Ben Arfa-esque when running with the ball today. Maybe Arsenal were a tad too open in midfield but he and Obertan are decent squad players.

That Arsenal-Toon game was very odd. Newcastle looked as though they might get it back to 4-4, but they had so many players missing that they'd run out of steam by the end. As it stands, Pardew can thank his lucky stars that neither Cisse nor Ba are off to the ACN, because the cupboard is bare after them two.

Oh, and Obertan is only a good squad player if you are thinking that Newcastle will go down. His 'challenge' on Walcott for Arsenal's 7th was laughable, as was his subsequent standing about like a fart in a trance.

Associated Press[/url]]AC Milan players walked off the field because of racist chants, abandoning an exhibition match in the first half with lower division club Pro Patria on Thursday.

The game was interrupted and later ended because of chants directed at several black Milan players, despite appeals to stop from the public address announcer.

After repeated chants directed his way, Ghana midfielder Kevin-Prince Boateng picked up the ball and kicked it at a section of the crowd in the 26th minute of the first half.

Boateng took off his shirt and walked off the field with his Milan teammates. Urby Emanuelson, Sulley Muntari and M'Baye Niang also were targeted by the chants.

"Walking off was the right choice when faced with something like this," Milan coach Massimiliano Allegri said. "We need to stop these uncivil gestures. Italy needs to improve and become better educated and more intelligent."

Good. FIFA really needs to start taking racism in football more seriously. It's simply shameful that they've turned a blind eye to it for so long.

This would never happen in the American footballing scene. Just sayin, we totally win in this department. >:P

On a more serious note, could a full-out walk off like this happen in a proper league match? I think only at that point will see actually see FIFA/UEFA do some real work on the issue which has been way long overdue.

Hmm, take away the camera and that would be Purple Nose's assault on David Beckham where the latter suffered a facial laceration caused by an errant boot propelled by the Scot. At half-time in a Premiership match, no less.

Another interesting sidenote on the purported photo series is that unless Bert can shed and grow back gloves on his hands in a millisecond, they are actually presented out of order. All adds to the story, I guess. Still, make the best of it, City's training ground will soon be off limits to the press, as United's already is.

Not seeing what 'interesting' observation you're finding in the series. I don't see Balotelli wearing gloves at any point in the photo series. I do see in the first photo, Kolo Toure in black glvoes tripping over a tiny Italian man, and what clearly seems like a pretty heavy altercation between Manicini and Balotelli. I don't see how 'the order' in which these photos are shown matter.

Before we turn this into another pointless 'comparison wars', let me just ask one more question on topic, do you as a City fan really want to keep siding with Balotelli and Mancini's insistence on having control over the man-child? Other than the absurd (tbh slightly unfair) amount of annoying/bad press, what exactly does Balotelli offer to the team right now? Is Balotelli really so important as one of the contributing factors to City's growing global fanbase/appeal as a franchise as Mancini says?